In Comparison
by FallAway
Summary: She’s physically ill from the realization and her blood gleams black in the dimmed lights of the club. So much for fairy dust. Oneshot.


Summary: She's physically ill from the realization and her blood gleams black in the dimmed lights of the club. So much for fairy dust. Oneshot.

Disclaimer: I don't have anything to do with the production of Veronica Mars. I also didn't write _Peter Pan_ and I have no association whatsoever with the Blood Brothers.

A/N: This came out of nowhere (as most of my fics do). This is my first attempt at VM fic and I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm having fun doing it so I figure: what the hell; might as well fuck around a little.

--

_She was so free, like a pineapple in a tree_

Tinkerbelle…was a badass: a homicidal little pixie with enough fairy dust to last a cocaine addict for years. Peter would never leave her; he wouldn't know what to do without his protective little Tink, all fluttering wings and shining eyes. She is his stability. She's cold hard metal wrapped inside an illusion of innocence. She's a fucking fairy, for Chrissake, what isn't there to love?

…And one is forced to wonder just how smothered the tiny thing feels by all of that affection and attention from her one-and-only boy.

Veronica does (or…did, at least. She assumes a breakup constitutes the usage of past tense).

Her name doesn't hold the same harsh staccato. It rolls like velvet off the tongue, all smoothed corners and gentle strokes. (But if she wants to get technical, then it does hold that staccato: when _he_ chokes it out and is cut off by a gasp when her small fingers find a new area to explore.) The slight click of the 'c' in the end is nothing in comparison to the rough outer edges of the little pixie's name. It doesn't force the tongue to stop and consider what it's saying before continuing on to the last two syllables. When Duncan says it she doesn't feel a sense of relief, or happiness, or even acknowledgement.

She just feels like a fraud. If she wanted to analyze that fact, then maybe she'd realize that he isn't her Peter. But she analyzes everything just a little too much, these days.

So she'll settle for comparison.

She's short; blond hair, big blue eyes, and a badass demeanor that completely counteracts the act that Tink puts on. She doesn't sulk in the corner when they gossip about her in the halls. She stands up as straight and tall as possible and she brushes past them with her walls wrapped in a perfect circle that's bolted and locked as tight as it can be.

The walls of Alcatraz aren't even as thick as hers.

But she supposes that makes up for the lack of fairy dust and glittery wings.

In comparison, she was once the spitting image of childhood innocence: untarnished and unblemished; even with the somewhat-crude suggestions of her (very, very dead) best friend.

Duncan still pines for that girl.

She still wonders why she can't remember the exact moment that girl disappeared.

It was sometime in between seeing Lilly's beautifully, expensively highlighted blond hair caked in crimson and waking up to an empty bedroom with no recollection of the previous night's events.

But the exact second that the glitter fell away and her wings broke and catapulted her to the ground at a breakneck speed eludes her. Maybe she doesn't care; maybe she just can't remember. None of that really matters anymore, though, does it?

Not when she's shoved against cold brick, cheek scraping roughly against the surface and promising a bruise in the morning. The hand around her throat is attached to an arm, cloaked in black leather, and that leather coats a muscled torso that supports a neck on the end of which is a head. And a mouth is part of that head and that mouth is trying to get her to say something; anything to give him a reason to hurt her.

The wall is vibrating under her skin and she can feel the sharp sting of salt in the cut on her lip. (Had she allowed him to come with her, that cut wouldn't be there.)

"Veronica!"

She snaps her eyes open and exhales sharply when the hand is ripped harshly from her throat. Her name held that staccato, that time. The thought makes her laugh unintentionally as he takes her hand and cups her face in the other.

"Are you alright?" The words are whispered in her ear and she can feel a fresh batch of tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

He showed up.

After dropping him at her convenience, falling back into the arms of his best friend and refusing to give him any sort of purchase in the past few months, he showed up. She called him when her father's car broke down and was close to begging him to pick her up when he muttered his consent and hung up.

Because she needed him; and maybe she always has.

She's physically ill from the realization and her blood gleams black in the dimmed lights of the club.

(So much for fairy dust.)

She nods once she catches her breath and he wipes the blood from her lip unceremoniously before wrapping an arm around her shoulders and practically carrying her out to the yellow monstrosity he calls a car.

When they pull up outside of her apartment she takes a deep breath and turns to face him.

_Thank you; I'm sorry; I love you._

But admitting all of that would be so characteristic of one tiny little pixie.

And Veronica Mars is nothing like Tinkerbelle. No matter how much she wants Logan to be her Peter.

--End--


End file.
